by Stephanie Morrill
“Why do you write for teens?”
I get asked that question a decent amount in interviews. By now, I should have a good answer for it, but the truth is that I don’t know. I can theorize that it has something to do with marrying my high school sweetheart, with seeing how choices made in high school affect the rest of your life. But truly, I don’t know. Those are just the stories I have.
So that must be why I resonate with Stephen King’s when he says in his classic book On Writing, “I was built with a love of the night and the unquiet coffin, that’s all. If you disapprove, I can only shrug my shoulders. It’s what I have.”
What about you? What kind of stories do you “have”? Do you ever feel like you owe people an explanation for why you write what you do?